The List: 30 Jan 2003 (Issue 460)

You know those nutters on Jackass? The ones who throw themselves around and inflict pain on each other for our entertainment? You know the hit MTV show hosted by Johnny Knoxville? Well now you can catch some of its stars in the flesh. Watch pain and bodily fluids spill onto the stage of the Barras as chief sadomasochist Steve-O performs for your pleasure. A mix of skateboard bravado, schlock horror and circus side-show freakiness.

His list of props in itself makes for painful reading: one staple gun (fully loaded); one steak knife; one 12ft ladder; five pairs of latex gloves; eight clear light bulbs (not frosted - they’re poisonous) . . . the list goes on and on. What exactly he’s gonna do with them is best left to the

comedy@list.oo.uk

‘I set my head on fire - I thought I could use it as a fire-breathing torch’

imagination. But bear in mind, Steve-O is up for obscenity and battery charges in Louisiana for stapling his scrotum to his thigh and presiding over a stunt where a bouncer knocked an audience member out cold.

I catch Steve-O at home and his drawled replies suggest he’s already trashed. ‘I drink a lot of alcohol to prepare for my shows,’ he says - and I guess he’s performing tonight. So what state does he expect to be in after an 11-date UK tour? ‘Chock full of illegal street narcotics and piping drunk,’ he says.

A professional circus clown and, in his own words, ‘an ass for attention’, Steve-O is famous for some of the most extreme stunts on Jackass. But he had a few ideas that were just too much for television. ‘Human beings inherently turn their heads and look at accidents,’ he says. ‘So I thought I’d deliberately create accidents.’

What’s the most intense stunt he’s pulled? ‘Maybe shooting up 502 of vodka from an lV.’ Jesus. The most painful? ‘Jumping out an aeroplane, though maybe when l burnt my face, that was pretty painful.’ What? ‘I jumped out of an aeroplane without a parachute and, yeah, I set my head on fire. I thought I could use it as a fire-breathing torch.’ Shit. And what’s the most extreme part of the live show? ‘I dunno. I guess I’m just generally forthcoming with bodily fluids.’

You have been warned. (Henry Northmore)

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